The quote above comes from an unfinished critique of the Manfreda-Popess identification.

Summary -

The term papessa was not applied to Maifreda until the 17th century.
The nun in the Brunate fresco is Maddalena Albrici. The man behind her must be her cousin, Pierio, who commissioned her tomb and renovations in the Church of San Andrea (including probably this fresco).

In 1966, Gertrude Moakley made a bold assertion that identified the Popess card of the Visconti Sforza tarot as the 13th century heretic Maifreda da Pirovano (also spelled Manfreda), a family relation (possibly first cousin) of the then-Lord of Milan, Matteo Visconti. Subsequent commentators on this pack and on the figure of the Popess in Tarot in general have never since failed to acknowledge Moakley’s identification, and it can justly be said that there is a consensus, among the small number of people concerned with this question, that the card probably does represent Maifreda.

However, I think there are good reasons to doubt this identification, popular though it is with commentators on historical Tarots. First I will present the source quotes, then the discussion. Bolded text is my emphasis, for points to be discussed later.

Moakley, obviously sensing an interpretative coup, is strident in her presentation of the identification. In the Undocumented Prelude of her book, she imagines the King of Lent, in the guise of the Tarot’s Bagatino,addressing the Duke and Duchess of Milan on the appearance of the Popess in the triumphal procession:
“’There are your noble cousins trussed up in front – we all know about them, especially your lady’s cousin Manfreda [pointing at the Popess]. Be careful other ladies in the family don’t get the idea of wearing the pants.’
“The Duke can afford to smile at this, and even the Duchess smiles. Once the story was all tragedy, but it is so long ago now that one really feels no personal interest in the poor Umiliata nun who had been burned at the stake a century and a half ago. She had seriously been chosen to be Popess by the little sect of Guglielmites, but now she is only a family joke.” (14-15)

Fiction notwithstanding, Moakley is no less assertive in her later presentation of the factual basis for her confidence:
“The Popess in the Visconti-Sforza tarocchi is not one of these legendary women [Pope Joan or a fisherman’s wife who became Pope in a folktale]. Her religious habit shows that she is of the Umiliata order, probably Sister Manfreda, a relative of the Visconti family who was actually elected Pope by the small Lombard sect of the Guglielmites. Their leader, Guglielma of Bohemia, had died in Milan in 1281. The most enthusiastic of her followers believed that she was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, sent to inaugurate the new age of the Spirit prophesied by Joachin of Flora. They believed that Guglielma would return to earth on the Feast of Pentecost in the year 1300, and that the male dominated Papacy would then pass away, yielding to a line of female Popes. In preparation for this event they elected Sister Manfreda the first of the Popesses, and several wealthy families of Lombardy provided at great cost the sacred vessels they expected her to use when she said Mass in Rome at the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Naturally, the Inquisition exterminated this new sect, and the “Popess” was burned at the stake in the autumn of 1300.” (72-73)

The bold text is my emphasis, in order to illustrate the subtle shifts in phrasing that will end up leaving the casual reader with the impression that Manfreda was literally “elected” to a position with the title “Popess”. Neither of these is true, but we will see a similar loose and potentially misleading use of terms and quotation marks in Barbara Newman’s writings a little further below. In casual use, such formulations as “elected” and “Popess” might be an acceptable understanding, but as the basis or premise for further argumentation that ends up making bold claims, they must be challenged.

For relating this obscure bit of Milanese history, directly related to the Visconti dynasty, to the Popess card, Moakley has been rewarded with a virtually universal acceptance by interpreters of the historical meaning of the card. The following sample of quotations from the most common sources consulted on the subject, with emphases, will serve to show how the idea became unavoidable and authoritative.

Note that Moakley, in the spirit of her interpretation of the Tarot as a "ribald take-off" of Petrarch's Trionfi, considers the Popess "a family joke". This is in contrast to Barbara Newman's (see below) view, which, while based wholly on Moakley's identification, considers her presence evidence of a serious, if secret, devotion to her memory on the part of Bianca Maria Visconti.

Another point to keep in mind, although tangential to this essay, is that Moakley clearly, albeit implicitly, presents the Visconti-Sforza Tarot as the original or Ur-Tarot, defined as the standard Tarot of 22 trumps and 56 suit cards (in contrast to other, earlier kinds of Triumph decks, such as the Cary Yale). Therefore her explanation of the Popess as Maifreda suggests that this was her original meaning, her reason for being in the deck, commissioned by Bianca Maria. This subtlety is lost on casual commentators like Newman, while it is interpreted differently by expert commentators like Michael Hurst, who, while admitting the plausibility of Moakley's identification, argue that it is only in the Visconti-Sforza deck that some reference to Maifreda might be found, whereas in other kinds of trump sequences the Popess does not refer to her. I wonder, if she believed that the Popess were present in the standard Tarot trump sequence before the commission of the Visconti-Sforza, whether Moakley would still have presented this position. In other words, if the artist of the Visconti-Sforza were copying the standard sequence, including a Popess, would she have imagined Bianca Maria instructing the artist to make a subtle allusion to Maifreda the executed heretic of 150 years earlier, writing perhaps "make three knots on the Popess' cincture, don't ask why"? Since she imagined Maifreda to be a "family joke" of the Visconti, it is hard to Moakley imagining this scenario (O'Neill has shown that the Visconti-Sforza Popess is not wearing the Umiliati habit, as Moakley believed, after all, which makes the idea that Bianca Maria had studied the question and precisely instructed the artist to represent her this way moot in any case. Nothing remains except that she is a Popess, which was already in the trump sequence anyway, so the only basis left to argue for Maifreda's presence is that she was related to the Visconti family (although never called or depicted as a Popess (see below)). The reader may judge if this is sufficient basis upon which to assert such a bold identification).

Stuart Kaplan gives a summary of Moakley’s theory, without seeming too strongly attached to it, in The Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. I (1978), p. 66. In volume two (1986), he alludes to the story and refers his readers to volume I (vol. II, pp. 159, 161).

Writing in 1980, Michael Dummett states Moakley’s identification as if it were fact:
“Miss Moakley, in her book on the Visconti-Sforza pack (no. 3),pointed out that in that pack the Popess depicts a historical character, Sister Manfreda, a relative of the Visconti family who was elected Pope by the Guglielmite sect, and burned at the stake in 1300.” (Game of Tarot, p. xi).

In 1986, Dummett’s opinion was unchanged. In The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, his description of Moakley’s idea was virtually identical:
“Usually the Popess is an exact female replica of the Pope; but, on the Visconti-Sforza card, though she wears the triple tiara and holds a cross, she is dressed, not as a pope, but as a nun. The explanation was given by Gertrude Moakley: the card depicts Sister Manfreda, a relative of the Visconti, who had actually been elected Pope by the heretical sect of the Guglielmites to which she belonged, and had been burned at the stake in 1300.” (p. 106)

(Gertrude Moakley made it clear that the figure seems to represent Sister Manfreda, a relative of the Visconti, who was actually elected pope by the heretical sect of the Guglielmites, to which she belonged, and who was burned at the stake in 1300.)

Michael Dummett's writings are the most authoritative sources for Tarot history, and there can be no doubt that his assertion of Moakley’s identification, strongly stated in the indicative voice, is influential for all researchers who can read English or Italian, and not only in the narrow fields of Tarot history and iconography. In other areas of historiography, writers on Pope Joan and medieval women’s spirituality take it for granted. It has become a scholarly commonplace.

Alain Boureau, writing a literary history of Pope Joan , attempts to show historical relationship and ideological identity between the then newly-minted Pope Joan legend and the ideas of the Guglielmite sect (French edition, pp. 187ff; English edition, pp. 171ff). Here he also presents the Visconti-Sforza Popess card as depicting Maifreda.

The strongest proponent of the idea outside of the world of Tarot history has been Barbara Newman. Like Moakley, she glides easily from the original sources, which describe no election and do not mention the term “Popess,” into using it as an innocent descriptive term that appears to have been original. More importantly, she takes for granted that the Visconti-Sforza card depicts Manfreda, and labels it without any hint of controversy as such in her first work on the subject ("WomanSpirit, Woman Pope", in From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (UPenn Press, 1995) pp. 182-223). This has important ramifications because Newman’s works are widely read in universities as well as by a popular audience.

(insert Newman, quotes/discussion)

Newman thought she had found further confirmation of the Popess-Maifreda-Visconti thesis in 2005, in the mountain village of Brunate.

The term papissa is never used in the surviving contemporary documents concerning the sect, and it is unlikely that it would have been used by the Guglielmites, even if they knew of it, since it was both recently coined and would probably have been considered humorous or derogatory.

Alain Boureau considers that Jean de Mailly invented the term papissa in his account of Pope Joan around 1255:
“The change is limited to a rectification and the invention of a new term: ‘a pope, or, rather, a popess (vel potius papissa), for it was a woman.’” (p. 107)

Although Caesar Baronius (Annales Ecclesiastici t. X (Rome, 1602), an. 879, num. 5 (p. 551 ed. of 1602)) relates that, in 879, Pope John VIII, having received the excommunicated Patriarch Photius of Constantinople back into communion, was reproached by the Latins for this with the insult that "he was not a pope like (his predecessors) Nicholas (I) and Adrian (II), but a Popess” (non papa ut Nicolas et Hadrianus, sed papissa fuerit) . Baronius himself is the only source for this story, however, and it is possible that he has made it up to account for the Pope Joan legend, to which use he explicitly puts it (I have, for instance, searched all of the letters of Photius in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, and found no trace of such an accusation.http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/2 ... 0),_GM.pdf
I will leave it to others to go through the rest of his commentaries and homilies in search of it.http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/3 ... tanus.html )

Insofar as the existence of the sect and its fate survived in the Milanese imagination, it was in a legendary form (boilerplate sex scandal, same from antiquity to today) which bore almost no relation to the real events and that omitted every detail, including Maifreda herself, while building a scandalous portrait of the sect:

"In this year (1300) the Jubilee was celebrated in Rome by Pope Boniface. At the same time in Milan there lived a female heretic named Guglielma, who presented herself as not a little religious and holy; she lived with a certain Andrea, called Saramita, and under cover of a pretended goodness they ran an underground synagogue near Porta Nuova, practising a foul heresy. They had agreed to assemble in the morning, at which were present many maidens, matrons, widows and wives, which by order of Guglielma were tonsured in the manner of priests. Also many youths and men were involved, in the guise of religion, and in this adulterous synagogue they had an altar, before which they made their fraudulent prayers. After shouting, “Let us marry, let us marry!”, and having placed the light under a cup, they then performed what was commanded; and in such a fashion they committed the secret fornication. In a little while, this most wicked Guglielma having departed this life, she was buried as a saint by the nuns of Chiaravalle. After her death, for six continuous years Andrea followed the sacrilegious and wicked ritual. At last it was uncovered by a Milanese merchant named Corrado Coppa, whose wife was attending the shameful place, since not a small suspicion had entered his head, he decided bring it to light; and so one night, rising, followed his wife secretly to the meeting, and there, when the lamp was hidden, he had intercourse with his wife, following the practice of the others, and removed from her finger a sapphire she was wearing and went out together with the others from the infamous site. After four days he asked his wife for the ring, pretending he needed it to make a deposit: she pretended to have lost it and finally, after pretending to have looked for it in different ways, said she could not find it. Corrado thereafter gave a solemn banquet, inviting many of his relatives and friends along with their wives, whom he had seen in the consortium. To these, after dinner, Corrado began to say: each man will play the game with his wife as I intend to do it with mine, and later I will show the reason, and all promised that they would. Then, parting the tie of the hair of the wives, they found a bald spot on their heads, at which, greatly marveling, they demanded the reason. Corrado explained it all clearly. So they reported those events of unprecedented wickedness to Matteo Visconti, the Prince of the city; and he, on the advice of the inquisitors, imposed by the mayor that Andrea with any of his followers should be arrested. The order being executed, all were put to torture, where they confessed that they had done so continuously for the space of eleven years. Finally Andrea with his companions was burned, and likewise the bones of the most wicked Guglielma, who, being held as entirely saintly, was thereby clearly shown to be heretical."
(Bernardino Corio, L'Historia di Milano, part 2 (pt. 2 chapter 8 in later editions))

Just as they didn’t use sacerdotissa or cardinalissa for their hoped-for new church, the Guglielmites wouldn’t have used (and, in any case, did not use) the term “Papissa”. This is a lesson in anachronism. It may seem natural that a female pope would be called by everyone, including her followers, a popess. But this is not necessarily the case with newly coined words, or old words that are revived to be applied to women. First of all, there never was a Popess – the extent of the knowledge of Jean de Mailly’s term is unknown for the late 13th century. Most writers who recount the legend (including Boccaccio’s popular version of the tale), well into the 15th century, don’t use it. The most common versions of the story use phraseology like “John, who was a woman” or “a woman, who was Pope.” Secondly, using a feminizing suffix was then, as it is now, often a way to trivialize it through overt sexualization. For instance, we don’t call female physicians “doctresses”, female soldiers “soldresses”, or a female mayor or senator "mayoress" or "senatress". (Lord Mayor for women, also “Presidentess”) Although the traditional words refer to males and are technically masculine, with the entry of women into those fields the titles did not change, and women would presumably be offended to be named by calling attention to their gender with that suffix, as if it somehow distinguished them from their male counterparts in the profession or function of the office. Both males and females are “soldiers” and “doctors”, "mayors" and "senators". A more relevant and compelling example is the Anglican/Episcopal Church’s rejection of the word “priestess” for female priests. Although indeed ancient, the word directly conjures up pagan rituals, and has no Christian antecedent. In the polemic against women’s ordination, Roman Catholics and Orthodox who are against it will deliberately use the word with offensive intent, always with feigned innocence, claiming that it is just a fact that a woman priest is a priestess, so there is no harm in using it.

Likewise then with “Popess” – at that time the word and the concept had not gained currency, there was no antecedent and certainly no dignity in the term. Like a woman becoming a physician and some people insisting on using the word “doctress” to describe her, for a woman to attain the papacy and for anyone to insist on calling attention thereby to her gender would probably have been laughable if it were not intended to denigate her, which is precisely how De Mailly introduced it. It remained attached to Pope Joan, or, when it begins to appear in the vernacular, as a ribald term or a way to express a woman’s unofficial relation to a male office (like Piccolomini’s – the Pope’s – sister). In other words, Popess was never a term of respect and dignity, much less an actual title a woman would aspire to. While it seems laudable today to try to “reclaim” certain terms and use them to build up rather than tear down the dignity of the subject, such a process should be recognized for what it is in the present – a militant and polemical tactic – and not blind the historian to the anachronism of using it to describe past subjects.

The first person I can find to use the term Papissa when describing Maifreda is Giovanni Pietro Puricelli (1589-1659), in his summary of the beliefs of the sect of Guglielmites, point 8 (of twelve). This was first edited and published by Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672-1750) in 1741 (this summary was widely translated into Italian, French and English).

(In the future Maifreda was to be a true Popess, provided with the authority and power of the true Pope, just as the Pope and Papacy of the Roman Church, which then was, would be abolished, and the place being given to the Popess Maifreda, Jews, Saracens, and the other nations, who are outside of the Roman Church and not yet baptized, should be cleansed in the water of holy baptism.)

(Sister Maifreda would be the true pope and have full and real jurisdiction and authority of the true pope and that she would be the true vicar of the Holy Spirit on the earth and that the pope and papacy of the Roman Church which currently exists, along with its rites, authorities and curia of cardinals would cease. And that the said sister would have the foresaid authority of the pope and papacy of the Roman Church and that Maifreda herself would baptize Jews, Saracens and all other nations that are outside the Roman Church who are not yet baptized.)

Note the original term “verus papa” (the true Pope), which Puricelli renders as “vera Papissa” (a true Popess). By using the two different articles, definite and indefinite, I am trying to make something clear. The context of the original discussion, and a frequent topic in the depositions, is that the current Church and its head, Pope Boniface VIII, are invalid and about to be replaced by that of the Holy Spirit under a new hierarchy. Boniface was not the “true Pope” as far as the Guglielmites were concerned – there was no Pope on earth at the moment. Thus, in the restored Church which was to have come at Pentecost 1300, Maifreda would be the true Pope. If we render Puricelli’s Latin with the definite article “Maifreda would be the true Popess”, there is little sense in the passage – for Puricelli, there never was an office of Popess to which Maifreda could aspire (the same was true of the Guglielmites). Thus the best way to understand him is to suggest that he was using the term Papissa as it was invented to refer to Joanna Papissa, which would have been a false story as far as he was concerned, but that Maifreda was to have been a true, that is a real, one, in contrast to the fabulous one.

Ross, I don't see what difference it makes whether Manfreda was called "Papesse" or not. First, she wasn't even called "Pope". She was called the would-be Pope, if ever the existing Pope and cardinals were persuaded to vacate those posts, as is clear from the deposition you quote. Second, the application of "Papessa" to the lady on the card was something new, no longer just a term of abuse used against a Pope named John. In documents available to us, it first appears in the "Steele Sermon", whenever that was, late 15th or early 16th century.. So let's look at the logical possibilities.

Either the term was got this new use from by the designer of the PMB, or it didn't.

If it didn't, either it got the use in application to the card, or it didn't.

If it didn't, it got applied to something else around the time of the early card, such as a character in church frescoes representing the Church, or Pope Joan, etc.

If applied to something else first, then somebody got the new idea of applying it to the person in the card.

If the term got applied to the card, but before the PMB, then somebody got the idea of applying it to the PMB. If it didn't get applied to some other card, then somebody got the idea of applying it to the PMB without a precedent in cards.

In either case, it is irrelevant whether Manfreda was called "Papessa" or not. All they had to know was that there was a Manfreda who a few people, including herself, had wanted to be Pope and perhaps thought was destined to be Pope. Then the card-namer either calls her "Papessa", a one-word title like "Empress", or he/she calls her "woman Pope" to distinguish her from another card called "Pope", and someone else later shortens that to "Papessa".

The real question is, how likely is it that some Tarot designer in Lombardy knew of this Manfreda so described? In successive 14tth century papal bulls some real Visconti ancestors of Bianca Maria were convicted in absentia of being Gugliemites and, in the first two, being followers of Manfreda. Some of these statements are in documents you provided me, Ross, others are cited by Lea in History of the Medieval Inquisition. See viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917&start=160#p13808. These were public documents, not Inquisition records, and since the charges reappeared in successive generations (three or four), the bulls would have been kept by the Visconti to inform the next generation of the danger; heresy was considered passed down through families. And even if the Visconti could no longer be linked to Manfreda directly, there was still the Holy Spirit movement, reflected in Visconti illuminated manuscripts (see e.g. my post of viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917&p=13696&hilit= ... rit#p13696 and for background those of Phaeded immediately before) of which Manfreda had seen herself as possibly playing a leading role.

There is also the existence of the abridged trial transcript, found in a shop in Pavia in the 17th century. That is not a normal place to store such documents. A more logical place would have been in the Visconti Library, in a vault accessible only to the Duke, or in the Visconti Palace itself, in Milan. However just before or after the Ambrosian uprising, or the French invasion, it would have been moved (I am not speculating, except on details, since its continued existence is a fact)--one or more times, until it ended up in the shop--or else the shop is just something made up to protect the real source. Where it went necessarily involves speculation: one not unlikely possibility is that it might have been given to the safekeeping of Bianca Maria's mother, since Bianca Maria would be the Visconti with the most to fear from accusations of heresy. From there it is not a big jump to the designer of the PMB.

You mention that the Humiliati did not wear brown. What matters is the information available to PMB designers in the 15th century, and in particular about the Guglielmites. The trial document says that the Guglielmites wore brown. For now I quote from my translation of Marcos Filesi's essay at http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page. ... 72&lng=ENG:

According to the minutes of the Inquisition, the robe of the Guglielmites was "morello,” that is, dark, and that the aforementioned Guglielma wore habits of the color “marrone moreto." For the nuances of the sentence, we can assume that on this occasion the term "morello" refers to a very dark brown, almost black.

Marcos is giving the Italian word. The original is of course in Latin, which itself is a translation of Milanese, which the transcriber may have been unfamiliar with. I don't know how dark the brown would have been understood as in the 15h century, or how sensitive a reader aa young Duchess would have been. The Fournier Popess's gown, of course, is quite dark.

There are two possibilities. Either the one who chose that color for the PMB Popess (Bembo or someone else) specified "brown" or he/she didn't. If she didn't, then Bembo just took the first outfit he saw on the street, the Poor Clares. But there is a later version of the card with a darker brown, more like the color specified in the transcript. If he/she did specify "brown", there are two possibilities. Either she was going by the trial transcript, which said "brown", or she chose brown for some other reason, for example, that it was the color of the Poor Claires, whom she didn't mind associating with Manfreda; they also, coincidentally or not, had the three knots mentioned in the trial transcript. And if she was going by the trial transcript, she might have told Bembo to make it like the outfit of the Poor Claires, not to arouse suspicion among non-family members. The later version of the card had a much darker brown, more in accord with the actual meaning of the word in the transcript.

Actually, there is every reason to suppose that the card wouldn't have repeated the color in the transcript exactly. Getting all the details right is suspicious and could trigger an Inquisitorial hunt for the suspected transcript. In 1450 the Dominican Inquisition was already instituting a prolonged reign of terror upon the country folk of northern Lombardy and the western Veneto (which I documented at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917&start=150#p13805). As it was, some preachers might have been suspicious. Marcos observed on this thread that the Steele Sermon's language "O wretches, that which the Christian faith denies!" could refer to heresy as well as to the otherwise orthodox Pope Joan (viewtopic.php?f=23&t=385&p=8315&hilit=trial#p8315).

On the knots, here is the trial transcript (my translation of Marcos's Italian):

“In this room in the presence of all the summoned people Sister Maifreda said that the lady St. Guglielma had ordained the sister Maifreda to say to all those present that she was the Holy Spirit, true God and true man, and that hence all the aforesaid there present would not have appeared in her presence [otherwise]. Added the aforementioned Sister Maifreda: "Let be for me what can be”. Allegranza also said to remember that the above mentioned lady Carabella in that house then sat on her own habit, and when she got up, she found that the belt or cord of her habit had made three bunches that had not been there: and there grew around them then marveling and whispering among them, and many from this same testimony believed it to be a great miracle”.

To be sure, we are still left with the possibility that the PMB card had nothing to do with Manfreda, that the correspondence between the trial transcript information and the card was all coincidence, and that the transcript itself, unlike all other Lombard trial transcripts in that it got to a shop in Pavia, was never seen by Bianca Maria. I see no alternative but to keep an open mind, and like Dummett in 1993. hedge my conclusions. I just wanted to deal with your arguments, which I don't think are as strong as you make uot.

I know you have other arguments against Manfreda. Marco cited some newly known sources on the "Visconti Marriage and Betrothal Commemorations" thread, which also come to nothing. Carry on!

P.S. I can hear Marco's voice in my head, asking, "But what does the Moakley hypothesis explain?" Yes, I should answer that question. It explains why the PMB Popess looks the way she does, a sad, simply dressed nun in a brown habit with a papal tiara, a sacred book and no key. True, Giotto's Faith is a causal antecedent; true, the Poor Claires had similar habits. But why those those antecedents? Manfreda is very definitely an explanation: if she is intended as a mnemonic reminder, to the descendants of those convicted of being part of her cult, of the Visconti heritage and curse, that is a sufficient reason for the image that is still preserved in the PMB.

And unlike other hypotheses, if the reason for the card itself, it would explain why the family identified with the four earliest decks with surviving cards (the CY, the Brera-Brambrilla, the PMB and the "Alessandro Sforza", if I am right about it: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=964#p14016), had both a Hanged Man and a Popess in the family, when most other tarot-related families had neither.

mikeh wrote:Ross, I don't see what difference it makes whether Manfreda was called "Papesse" or not.

Hello Mike,
I think Ross is explaining that Gertrude Moakley expressed herself in a misleading way. [Moakley leaves] the casual reader with the impression that Manfreda was literally “elected” to a position with the title “Popess”. Neither of these is true.

Unluckily, Moakley's incorrect statements have been widely accepted and reiterated. If I understand correctly, the actual sources testify that Manfreda was not seen as a Popess before the XVII century. In my opinion, this is important and does make a difference.

mikeh wrote:Ross, I don't see what difference it makes whether Manfreda was called "Papesse" or not.

Hello Mike,
I think Ross is explaining that Gertrude Moakley expressed herself in a misleading way. [Moakley leaves] the casual reader with the impression that Manfreda was literally “elected” to a position with the title “Popess”. Neither of these is true.

Unluckily, Moakley's incorrect statements have been widely accepted and reiterated. If I understand correctly, the actual sources testify that Manfreda was not seen as a Popess before the XVII century. In my opinion, this is important and does make a difference.

That's right, Marco. Moakley's words were not the most carefully chosen, but she could not foresee what they would result in, and Tarot history was much less serious in those days anyway, being essentially non-existent. She was the first to give it a firm iconographical, art-historical footing. And what a great coincidence that she could correspond with one of the most significant figures of the Warburg school, Erwin Panofsky. We have good pedigree! If only more would follow it.

My real target in this unfinished paper was Barbara Newman, but I haven't had the energy yet to gather together the damning quotes from her and critique them. She just took Moakley's identification and ran with it, which is why I had to drag poor Gertrude into it, just to show how easily someone could be misled. But that is not the only problem with Newman's ideas.

It IS important that Manfreda was not called "Papessa" before Puricelli christened her with it, because of the anachronism that is so easy to slip into. Even the inquisitors didn't use it, either to disparage her, or even because they didn't know it yet (it was, as Bourreau says, recently coined, and probably not very well known - and Boccaccio, the best known version of the Pope Joan story, doesn't even use it. It wasn't very widespread at all throughout the 14th century).

To me it seems ridiculous to believe that Bianca Maria was a closet arch-heretic, who believed there should be (or should have been) a female Pope who was the vicar of the Holy Spirit, Guglielma. It is only barely plausible to think she even had access to the document that mentions that she was to have been Pope, and I find it completely unbelievable to think that she pored over this document, found the passage with Saramita's passing testimony to this effect, seized on it, and had a picture made of Manfreda AS the Pope.

My argument is that it was Bianca Maria's business, and that of all the Visconti ancestors, to know the documents, including the public ones incriminating Matteo Visconti, Galeazzo Visconti, and even briefly, Bernabo Visconti half a century later. I imagine her having help initially from her mother. When you read the transcript, as opposed to the summary, Manfreda comes out more sympathetic, deluded by her own visions and imagined hints from her idol, but with the courage to follow them. Nothing like the preachers' invectives. As far as I can tell, her biggest crime was conducting a mass, and not a "black mass" either.. "If you tell them, Saramita and I are dead," she told the others (perhaps not an exact quote). She wasn't deluded then! To be sure, that is more radical than the Sforza-sponsored Saint Agostino Altarpiece, which Kirsch and Bendera agree is a Coronation of the Virgin that puts the Virgin and Jesus on the same level, both crowned by the Father, as opposed to the usual Mary's being crowned by Jesus (see my post and Marco's picture at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917&p=13643#p13643). I do suspect Bianca Maria of being a closet feminist. I hope I can get the time to translate the Italian version of the transcript someday.

Mike,
As one who once shared your opinion, let me offer this: unless the cards were strictly for distribution among a circle of Visconti family members conversant with the Manfreda episode, then the habit of the "Faith" card (and that is truly what I think it was intended to be) would only be understood as Franciscan/Clare (or rather a lay Clare without the distinctive black over-veil). As I've pointed out elsewhere, Nicholas V reformed the habit of the third order Franciscans upon becoming pope in 1447; i.e., the Franciscan habit was topical when the PMB was created and widespread via the papal bull addressing that habit.

Perhaps a parallel from our own time is an inappropriate way to finish this thought, but think of how the new pope is extremely popular simply because he chose the name Francis. Fraticicelli aside, the Franciscans were non-controversial and generally admired by the general public for their oaths of poverty - St. Francis himself always popular regardless of one's affiliation to another Catholic order. Dressing up "Faith" for war-torn, starved Milan with the three knotted virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience is ironically one of the least controverisal items in the PMB. The papal tiara did signify three levels of authority but the Pope is also present and thus Faith(of-the-Catholic-Church) is indicated as merely being in lock-step with its leader.

Phaeded

BTW: In a thread elsewhere on the Papess I posted the cover image of a book about the Umiliati that supposedly depicted Umiliati nuns dressed exactly as our PMB "Papess"; the problem is I ran into this very painting in the Bologna Pinacoteca this past spring and read that they were...Cistercian nuns (museum placard and painting detail in two attachments below):

Phaeded wrote:
BTW: In a thread elsewhere on the Papess I posted the cover image of a book about the Umiliati that supposedly depicted Umiliati nuns dressed exactly as our PMB "Papess"; the problem is I ran into this very painting in the Bologna Pinacoteca this past spring and read that they were...Cistercian nuns (museum placard and painting detail in two attachments below):

Italy 2013 166.JPG

Italy 2013 167.JPG

Thank you very much for the correction, Pheaded!Here is your orginal post. The saint is actually labelled "St. Bernardus" in the painting too so, from the description in the museum, he must be Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most important exponents of the Cistercian order.

No problem Marco - happy to admit when I'm wrong (especially when I find the damning evidence ;-).

Mike,
Not sure how much this will interest you - but this article discusses an interesting Cremonese cycle of frescoes commissioned by the general of the Umliati order who was also a major backer of the Sforza regime (c. 1513). The central medallion depicts a nun-like woman in the sky but apparently she is just "Philosophy" (sorry, nothing about Manfreda here) surrounded by Arab and Greek astrologers, including hometown astrologer (who cut his teeth in Toledo), Gerard of Cremona. There could be a link between this astrological program and the enduring Three Ages/Holy Ghost movement of Joachim of Fiore (apparently adopted by some of the Umiliati, including Manfreda) but again, no reference to her here. Still a very odd cycle of "great men" featuring astrologers, in a cloister no less.

Myth and Astronomy in the Frescoes at Sant'Abbondio in Cremona
Marika Leino and Charles Burnett
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
Vol. 66, (2003), pp. 273-288

The PMB "Papess" as Faith-as-Franciscan nun; my rationale being that the new Sforzan regime found it expedient to hold up Franciscan Poverty as a virtue to be embraced at the point in time.

Consider these images of St. Francis marrying "Lady Poverty" - while not exactly a nun certainly speaks to the simplicity of the Faith nun:
[could not find details on this image that oddly looks like a card - probably just a panel painting]

As one who once shared your opinion, let me offer this: unless the cards were strictly for distribution among a circle of Visconti family members conversant with the Manfreda episode, then the habit of the "Faith" card (and that is truly what I think it was intended to be) would only be understood as Franciscan/Clare (or rather a lay Clare without the distinctive black over-veil). As I've pointed out elsewhere, Nicholas V reformed the habit of the third order Franciscans upon becoming pope in 1447; i.e., the Franciscan habit was topical when the PMB was created and widespread via the papal bull addressing that habit.

Unlike you, I do not think that the PMB was designed primarily as a political propaganda tool. I agree with Ross that it was for the family. It is the same as for all those books of hours, etc., that the Visconti made. I am not sure who all the PMB clones were made for later, but surely also for particular family members or close friends who they wanted to honor and who would not have been wanting for provisions. I do not think that people being exhorted to live simply would be much impressed by such hand-painted luxury items. To be sure, there might have been a cheaper version; that is another question. If, however, it was modeled on the PMB, the question of the raison d'etre remains. It is, after all, a card that the Church seems to have done whatever it could, starting with the Steele Sermon, to deprecate, co-opt (after 1521), and if possible remove, depending on the cooperation of the local secular authorities. (I mean Tarocchi's replacement by the unwieldly Minchiate in Florence and elsewhere, the Juno on the Besancon, and, I think, the "papi".) A "Poor Clare" Faith would make a good cover story, if people asked. (But why the tiara? Isn't that a bit much? people might have wondered. If people find the explanation convincing these days, I'm sure they would have then.) And if there were no Popess cards before the PMB, which I think quite possible, then Manfreda could be the raison d'etre for the card in the first place.

Of course this is speculation. I think it all is, either way, once the faux pas are cleared up. I would say "with equal reason", except that history is often not very reasonable, much less, simple. The card could just as well have been put in by someone who wanted to embarrass the Pope with a joke about his morals (whether or not the Pope at that time, whenever it was, had mistresses, as long as it wasn't unthinkable, as from Boccaccio's and others' accounts of monks and nuns it certainly wasn't). But I am open to argument, I hope.

Thanks for the reference to the Umiliati church in Cremona. Ludovico Maria was quite the believer in astrology, and from what I read his astrologer did well for himself, until of course his patron ended up in a French prison.